The Rest Is Still Unwritten

So far this decade no one has given more profound advice than Natasha Bedingfield when she told me to feel the rain on my skin, no one else can feel it for me, that only I could let it in. No one else and I mean no one else can speak the words on my lip. Then I should just drench myself in words unspoken; live my life with arms wide open. The rest, of course, has remained unwritten. Despite the life changing advice she gave me, it was safe to assume that she didn’t have much left in her well after that.

The follow up single, titled, um, Single was not as well received then there was the laughable first single from her next album I Want to Have Your Babies. The album ended up getting released in April in England but postponed after Babies failed to make a dent stateside. Eight months later, a version of the album is finally dropping here with a major overhaul, only half the songs appear on the two albums, a name change to Pocketful of Sunshine, and a new lead single, Love Like This featuring the ubiquitous Sean Kingston. Yes the Beautiful Girls dude that ruined many summer house parties last year.

The result of all that reconfiguring leaves not that much change as the album ends up sounding much like the last but without the two huge hits. There are a few listenable songs, Soulmate can be touching if you are search for one yourself, if not, you will just sound like a Christina Aguilera castoff but sung by someone without a vocal range. Happy is the closest to a sing a long on the album but still not even as good as These Words.

Bedingfield’s time as Justin Timberlake’s opening act seems to have rubbed off because many of the songs like the title track and Angel have the futuristic beats from his last album, but her they are so muddled they just don’t work most of the time. Adam Levin of Maroon 5 fame is relegated to background duties but the back and forth between the two would have been much more if Levine would have been featured than the Kingston duet.

Song to Download - Happy

Pocketful of Sunshine gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.